in Thoreau’s Journal:

 P. M. —To Conantum.

A thick mist, spiriting away the snow. Very bad walking. This fog is one of the first decidedly spring signs also the withered grass bedewed by it and wetting my feet. A still, foggy, and rather warm day.

I heard this morning, also, quite a steady warbling from tree sparrows on the dripping bushes, and that peculiar drawling note of a hen, who has this peevish way of expressing her content at the sight of bare ground and mild weather. The crowing of cocks and the cawing of crows tell the same story. The ice is soggy and dangerous to be walked on.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Pleasant morning, unexpectedly. Hear on the alders by the river the lill lill lill lill of the first F. hyemalis, mingled with song sparrows and tree sparrows. The sound of Barrett’s saw mill in the still morning comes over the water very loud. I hear that peculiar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

J. Farmer tells me his dog started up a lark last winter completely buried in the snow.

Painted my boat.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is the first and last snows—especially the last—which blind us most, when the sun is most powerful and our eyes are unused to them.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The song sparrow and blackbird heard to-day. The snow going off. The ice in the pond one foot thick.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

All these birds do their warbling especially in the still, sunny hour after sunrise, as rivers twinkle at their sources. Now is the time to be abroad and hear them, as you detect the slightest ripple in smooth water. As with tinkling sounds the sources of streams burst their icy fetters, so the rills of music begin to flow and swell the general quire of spring. Memorable is the warm light of the spring sun on russet fields in the morning.

A new feature is being added to the landscape—and that is expanses of & reaches of blue water.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I suspect that in speaking of the springing of plants in previous years I have been inclined to make them start too early generally.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

You incline to walk now along the south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and north winds. The sidewalks are wet in the morning from the frost coming out.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To us snow and cold seem a mere delaying of the spring. How far we are from understanding the value of these things in the economy of Nature.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is remarkable how true each flower is to its season.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The river is frozen more solidly than during the past winter, and for the first time for a year I could cross it in most places. 

I did not once cross it the past winter, though by choosing a safe place I might have done so without doubt once or twice. But I have had no river walks before.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I  must not forget the lichen-painted boles of the beeches….

The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I go along below the north end of the Cliffs. The rocks in the usual place are buttressed with icy columns, for water in almost imperceptible quantity is trickling down the rocks. It is interesting to see how the dry black or ash-colored umbilicaria, which get a little moisture when the snow melts and trickles down along a seam or shallow channel of the rock, become relaxed and turn olive-green and enjoy their spring, while a few inches on each side of this gutter or depression in the face of the rock they are dry and crisp as ever. Perhaps the greater part of this puny rill is drunk up by the herbage on its brink.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

What produces the peculiar softness of the air yesterday & today—as if it were the air of the south suddenly pillowed amid our wintry hills— We have suddenly a different sky—a different atmosphere.

It is as if the subtlest possible soft vapour were diffused through the atmosphere. Warm Air has come to us from the S. But charged with moisture—which will yet distill in rain or congeal into snow & hail—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

P. M. —To Walden via R. W. E.’s.

I am surprised to see how bare Minott’s hillside is already. It is already spring there, and Minott is puttering outside in the sun. How wise in his grandfather to select such a site for a house, the summers he has lived have been so much longer!

How pleasant the calm season and the warmth —like a burning-glass on my back — and the sight and sound of melting snow running down the hill! I look in among the withered grass blades for some starting greenness. I listen to hear the first bluebird in the soft air. I hear the dry clucking of hens which have come abroad.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

P. M. — To Pine Hill across Walden.

The high wind takes off the oak leaves. I see them scrambling up the slopes of the Deep Cut, hurry-scurry over the slippery snow-crust, like a flock of squirrels. The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To-day it snows again, covering the ground. To get the value of the storm, we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we be, as it were, turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather-beaten, so that we become storm men instead of fair-weather men.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The abundance of light, as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc., is more springlike than anything else of late.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A sharp cutting air— This is a pretty good winter morning however— Not one of the rarer. There are from time to time mornings—both in summer & winter when especially the world seems to begin anew—beyond which memory need not go—for not behind them is yesterday and our past life—when as in the morning of a hoar frost there are visible the effects of a certain creative energy—the world has visibly been recreated in the night—mornings of creation I call them.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle today.